


on the barren planet

by mistyheartrbs



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Lexa Lives, Post-Nuclear War, every day i thank the writing gods that that's a tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-17
Updated: 2018-04-24
Packaged: 2019-04-03 16:25:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14000031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mistyheartrbs/pseuds/mistyheartrbs
Summary: Lexa and Clarke, together and alive.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i'd planned to post this on 3x07 day but life got in the way and i haven't had the inspiration nor the motivation to write more than these little oneshots, but soon i'll have way more free time so! there's that

It was a regular day on the abandoned planet, Day 652 if Clarke remembered right. She'd lost contact with the bunker about a year in, and sometimes she wondered if she'd ever hear her mother's voice again.

It wasn't all bad, though. She wasn't alone.

"Clarke!" Lexa called out, carrying armfuls of dry tree branches. "I found enough for a fire, but you should be careful." She dropped the branches and then winced at the sudden movement. "These are extremely flammable."

"Wouldn't want to set the only living part of this place on fire, would we?" Clarke hopped down from the truck and hurried over to help Lexa with the sticks. "You know, you really don't have to do this kind of thing. I can help."

"I know this place better than you do." There was a hint of smugness in Lexa's voice that made Clarke laugh. "You're a better lookout, anyway."

"Yeah, but it's been almost two years and you're still . . ."

"I was shot clean through the stomach, Clarke. It's not a wonder that I survived, but it's a wonder that I'm as healthy as I am."

"I just don't want to lose you again, okay?" Clarke placed one gloved hand on Lexa's cheek and leaned in, and Lexa returned in kind. "The first time nearly killed me as it was."

"I wouldn't leave you."

"I really hope not." Clarke took a sharp intake of breath, looking out at the sky. "Do you think they're okay?"

"Most likely." Lexa held a hand over her forehead and squinted, as if she could see the little ship orbiting the Earth if she looked hard enough. "You Sky People are . . . incredibly hardy, for better or for worse."

"I just wish I could talk to them or something." Clarke sighed, sitting down on the ledge overlooking what used to be her home. "I need to know if they're okay. They're my people, you know?"

"You don't owe anything to them right now." Lexa slowly eased herself down next to Clarke, leaning her head on her shoulder. "Neither of us do. The Commander as we know her is dead. The Sky People are all scattered. You've done so much for them."

"You've done a lot, too." Clarke slid off her glove and pressed her palm against Lexa's.

"I do wish it was different, sometimes." Lexa gazed out at the landscape, so dead and gray. "Why did our ancestors create such massive weapons, anyhow?"

"They thought it'd keep them safe, I guess." A stale wind blew through, carrying with it the scent of radiation and dead plants. "Mutually assured destruction, all that. Nobody'd try dropping something that big if the other side could do the same to them."

"Hmm." Lexa seemed to ponder over this for a moment. "It's still not a good plan."

"Yeah. And it's not like they could've predicted that a crazy robot woman would unlock everything anyway."

"Right."

"Did you know," Clarke said, "-that way back in the 1980s, there was a guy who proposed keeping the nuclear codes in a human heart?"

"Why would he do that?" Lexa asked, swinging her legs over the rocky ledge, back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. If it'd been anyone else, Clarke might've been worried that she'd fall. As it was, though, Lexa had the agility of a cat.

"Well, this way, if the President - who was like the Commander, sorta, except they were elected instead of winning a fight - wanted to nuke someone, wipe out hundreds of thousands of faceless people, first they'd have to cut open a real live person in front of them. With blood on their hands and everything."

"That sounds . . . barbaric."

"That's the point." Clarke pulled her knees close to her chest, surveying the scene in front of them. The Earth, barren save for this little forest they called home. Nobody but the two of them. "Fat lot of good it would've done, though. ALIE didn't even have a body. Even if she could've cut someone open, she wouldn't have cared."

"I think we're better than them," Lexa said after a moment. "Do you?"

"Yeah." Clarke stood up, offering Lexa her hand. "When the air cleans up and everyone gets out of the bunker and Raven and the others come back down to Earth, we'll make a better government, alright?"

"I think that'd be perfect, Clarke."

It was not a wonderful world they lived in, but it was close enough.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three's a crowd, as they say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> new season of the flopdred starts tonight, so i thought what would be a better time to post a chapter of this fic in which lexa is alive and i gently give jason rothenberg the middle finger while backflipping into the sun? so here it is
> 
> also to note: italics indicate trigedasleng

Clarke and Lexa had a house of sorts they'd built in the surrounding forest, made up of sticks and rocks and tied together with rope, but it didn't provide much protection from acid rain or howling winds, so they found themselves tucked together in the rover more often than not. It was one of those days that led to the two of them lying down in its close quarters while a dust storm blew outside. Lexa rolled around uncomfortably. 

"Still not used to the cramped quarters, Commander?" Clarke teased. Lexa shoved her. 

_"Shof op,"_ she muttered. "It's just my injury. It acts up sometimes, when the weather's . . . like this." 

"Pfft, you're like a little old lady. The older people on the Ark used to say the same thing whenever the weather got bad." Clarke frowned. "They never really had weather there, though. I think they were just being melodramatic." 

"Most likely." Lexa rolled over again to face Clarke, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "Am I being melodramatic?" 

"You're fine, Lexa." Clarke's fingers crept down to Lexa's shirt, where she gingerly pulled up the fabric and touched the spot where Titus had shot a bullet clean through her. "Does it hurt when I do this?" 

"Not really." Lexa felt a sort of warmth flow through her cheeks while Clarke's hand remained, gentle, on her stomach. "It's more of a . . . dull ache. I doubt it'll ever go away entirely, but I don't mind it." 

"Huh." Clarke looked down at the rover's floor. "I should've-" 

"You did everything you could, Clarke. If it hadn't been for you - if you had just stood there paralyzed - I'd be dead in the ground. You don't need to blame yourself for it." 

"Thanks." Clarke looked at Lexa again, studying her intently. Lexa wondered if she was thinking about how to draw her. "Something else is bothering you, isn't it?" 

"Something's been stealing our food," Lexa admitted. "It's not enough to notice, but resources are limited and it's not like there's an abundance of plants and animals around here. We might live in the last living place on Earth." 

"What do you think it is?" Clarke flipped over to look at the ceiling of the rover - closed, now, to prevent the dust from getting in, but most nights she kept it open in order to see the stars. 

"Probably a bear." 

"We still have bears?"

"You never know." Lexa held Clarke's hand in her own, an action that was as easy as breathing. "I'm going to look for it tomorrow." 

"Be careful." 

"I think I'm quite able to take care of myself, Clarke." 

"Of course you are. Doesn't mean I'm not still going to worry." 

_"Reshop,_ Clarke." 

"Goodnight, Lexa." 

***

The dust storm had subsided by morning, and Clarke awoke to an empty spot where Lexa usually slept. She froze up, reaching for her rifle and scrambling out from under the makeshift blankets made from ratty clothes sewn together, all while a part of her brain panicked, thinking that maybe she'd dreamt the past two years, that maybe she'd really woken up and Lexa was dead and-

"Good morning, Clarke." Lexa stood a few feet from the rover, surveying the valley below. "I figured we'd best get an early start on tracking the bear." 

"At . . . dawn?" 

"It would still be sleeping, so we'd have the element of surprise if we found it." Clarke thought with a shudder of an enormous, lumbering bear towering over her and Lexa. It'd probably have five legs or something like that, knowing the way things were. She'd still never been able to get used to the mutant animals. 

"Okay," she said, shaking her head to clear it of thoughts about mutant bears. "Let's go."

***

The forest was a familiar place to the both of them - being the only living spot left on Earth made it the only place they could ever go, really - but the two women still stuck close to each other, Lexa with her sword and Clarke with her rifle, wandering further and further into the undergrowth.

"A bear," Clarke repeated, no doubt thinking over the old photos of the creatures she'd seen on the Ark. "Have you ever seen one up close?" 

"Once. I was seven years old, and I snuck off to the woods by myself." Lexa smiled at the memory. "All I had with me was a stick." 

"Why were you in the woods?" 

"I was sick of learning how to be the Commander. I was a child, and I was naturally curious about the world around me, so somehow the idea got into my head that I should head off and show everyone else how capable I was. Foolish, I know." 

"You were a kid." 

"Still." Lexa's chest tightened. "I worried Anya sick. I kept on hearing her call, but I refused to go back. Out of stubbornness, I suppose." 

"She'd have been proud of you." 

"I still wish she was there, though." It took energy - more energy than she'd like to admit - to hold back tears. "We've all lost people. It gets difficult to carry all of that with you." 

"Believe me, I know." Clarke ran her fingers over the wood of her rifle - names, scratched and splintered, covered it. Lexa hadn't asked about it. "At least we've got each other." 

"Right." 

"We'll get any bear that even dares to cross our path." 

"Absolutely." Lexa allowed herself a smile, and she squeezed Clarke's hand before venturing further into the undergrowth. 

***

"It's getting late," Clarke noted, popping a berry into her mouth. "We might need to set up camp here for the night." 

"We could probably make it back without much of a problem." Lexa looked up at the sky, wondering idly if one of the stars just beginning to appear overhead held Clarke's friends. "Only if we turned back now, though." 

"Eh, the bear hunt's already gotten this far." Clarke stretched her arms out, her limbs making a satisfying _pop!_ "We might as well see it through until the end." 

"I suppose." Lexa paused. "It's been a long time since I've camped out in the woods like this." 

"It's kinda depressing." Clarke unfurled the blanket in her pack and plopped down on the ground. She was right - the little area that the two of them occupied might have been as green as a garden, but they both knew that nothing flourished beyond there, that it was all filled with barren, burnt-out trees and dirt riddled with ashes. 

"That bear must have had the right idea, then."

"To come so close to our spot?" 

_Our spot._ A home, Lexa thought, something the two of them had built, the "maybe someday" that had eluded her for so long. Lexa paced back and forth while Clarke watched her from the ground. 

"Exactly. I'd imagine that the dwindling resources aren't helping the wildlife, either, which makes it all the more important that we get rid of the bear as soon as possible." Clarke let out a laugh. "What's so funny?" 

"Nothing, it's just . . . you're acting like it's a battle or something when we're really just trying to find a bear. Can't take the Commander out of the girl, I guess, even when you literally . . . take the Commander . . . anyway." Silence settled over the pair. "Sorry."

"I've made peace with it." Lexa touched the scar on the back of her neck gingerly. 

"Do you miss it?" Clarke murmured, soft, so quiet that if not for how attuned Lexa was to her voice she'd have missed it entirely. Lexa shrugged.

"I miss Polis. Seeing all of those people walking and laughing and just _being._ If the Mountain Men had found a way to see that, I don't think they'd have done what they did. And I miss those I've lost, obviously. Anya, Costia, Aden, even Titus to some degree. I can't say I miss being forced to lead armies, sending people to die, never . . . living." She turned to look at Clarke again. "What about you?" 

"The Ark wasn't really anything to miss. It was stuffy and the air was stale and everything was tense - they made an effort to hide how royally screwed we were, but it wasn't enough. Everyone knew we were gonna die soon. I guess that's how they were able to justify using a hundred kids as guinea pigs." Clarke fiddled with the ends of her hair - she'd cut it above the shoulder after a hunting mishap, and this was a habit she'd taken to in the recent weeks. "I mean, it was stable. Things weren't always trying to kill us, but when we were surrounded by deep space everywhere it wasn't like I felt safe. I remember stepping onto the Earth for the first time and just . . . breathing. That was nice." 

"I can imagine." 

"I hope the bear doesn't put up too much of a fight. I'm running out of medicine." 

"I'll be careful." 

"You should." Clarke pulled Lexa close, listening for her heartbeat. "I don't think I'd be able to stand losing you again." 

"I feel the same." The moment, promptly, was interrupted by something rustling in the bushes. Lexa stiffened. 

"Hold steady," she whispered, unsheathing her sword and pressing her back to Clarke's. 

"You never told me how that story ended," Clarke whispered back. "About when you snuck off." 

"I'll tell you once we've cleared this up." The bushes rustled again, and promptly the two women were met with the sharp end of a knife. "A child?" Lexa breathed. Indeed, standing in front of them was not a bear at all, but a little girl, probably no older than eleven, trembling and clutching a knife in her hands. 

_"Stand back!"_ the girl snapped, in Trigedasleng. as she spoke. Clarke advanced slowly towards her. _"D-don't come any closer!"_

"It's okay." Clarke closed her eyes, tried to remember the tone her mother would use in a situation like this. God, she wished she was here right now. She'd know what to do. "I'm not gonna hurt you, alright?" 

_"How did you survive?"_

"We're, uh, Natblida. Both of us." Clarke caught a glimpse of black blood, dried and crusty, stuck to the girl's clothes. Lexa pulled down her sleeve to reveal scratch marks from an old skirmish with a three-armed raccoon, the same blood making itself known. 

_"We're like you,"_ Lexa said. The girl let out a fearful, shaky breath. _"I'm Lexa. Who are you?"_ Clarke couldn't help but notice that Lexa had left off any mention of her prior status. She supposed that there was no Commander anymore, not really. The Commander had died when the bullet struck her stomach. Lexa was left in her place. 

_"Madi,"_ the girl replied. 

"It's nice to meet you, Madi," Clarke added, thinking still of the fall of the Commander, Polis' candlestick tower toppled to the ground, the world made barren. She never thought she'd see another child again. It was at that moment when she saw Madi's uneven gait as she swayed back and forth, still with her dagger at the ready. "You're hurt." 

_"I'm fine."_

"You're not. Let me see your leg." 

_"No!"_ Madi jumped back and promptly tumbled to the ground, gritting her teeth and squeezing her eyes shut. Anyone could see she was in pain. 

"You won't make it long out here like that," Clarke murmured, crouching down to eye level. She could see Madi's leg better, now, wrapped haphazardly in torn shreds of her clothes and very much in need of care. _The poor thing must've been living on her own for years,_ Clarke realized. "Something might get you." 

"A bear," Lexa offered, eyebrows raised in amusement. 

_"There aren't any bears left. Priamfaya killed them all."_

"Just come back with us, okay? We can help fix your leg. Even if it's only for a night." Madi didn't make eye contact when she answered. 

_"Fine."_

***

Lexa had the tact not to mention it to Clarke, but she knew that if they hadn't found Madi as she was, she would've been dead in days. The thought made her chest hurt. Maternal was not something she'd ever been, but there was something about the girl that reminded her of Aden and her other protégés, and it wasn't just the blood. Clarke jauntily walked a few steps ahead, carrying Madi in her arms like a soldier with a wounded companion. 

_"You must be very brave,"_ she whispered in Trigedasleng, voice softening. Her accent could use some work, Lexa thought, and hoped she'd remind herself to give tips on it. _"To have been surviving on your own all this time."_

_"I was fine."_

_"You weren't."_ Clarke's voice grew firm, commanding. Lexa felt chills down her back. _"We're nearly to our home. Get some sleep, okay?"_

***

Madi was out as soon as Clarke set her down in the rover, snoring softly. Lexa crawled in a moment later, making sure to provide as much space as she could. Clarke did the same, but it wasn't really much, Clarke thought. It was close quarters even just for the two of them - with three people, they had to press themselves against the walls. 

"What're we going to do with her?" Clarke whispered. One look at Lexa's expression told her she didn't know either. She looked up at the stars twinkling above, still just as clear as they'd been up in space. 

"We'll see tomorrow, I suppose." Lexa rolled over on her back and closed her eyes. Clarke did the same, but she couldn't help but notice when Madi clung to her arm, gentle and desperate, every bit the tiny child she still was. By the time she'd fallen asleep, the three of them were pressed close together, Lexa and herself curled around Madi like protective mother wolves. 

***

 _"I'm staying,"_ Madi said, the first thing Lexa heard as she groggily awoke. She used to be able to jump right into battle at a moment's notice, even if she'd been asleep a few seconds prior. Spending the world's longest and most morbid honeymoon with Clarke had worn that away, somewhat. Nobody was here to attack them anymore save for wild animals. She didn't need to command more battles. It was nice. 

"Hrm?" 

_"Here."_ Madi swung her legs back and forth at the edge of the rover. _"You two seem nice. If the other one lets me."_

 _"I'm sure she'd love that."_ Lexa scooted to the edge next to Madi and looked at her leg. _"She'd also like to look at that leg, if you'd let her."_

_"Who are you, really?"_

_"Perceptive, hmm?"_ Lexa hummed, looking out at the expanse of land in front of her, heard Clarke's snoring behind her. _"I was Heda, once. Perhaps one day I'll have to be that again, when we have more people back. For now, though? I'm Lexa. That's all."_

 _"You were Heda?"_ Madi's eyes grew wide, eager, and for a moment Lexa feared she'd made a mistake, that the girl would all of a sudden see her as something entirely different. _"Would you teach me swordfighting? I never got to learn, and all I have is this knife. I can't teach myself very well."_

_"I'd love that."_

_***_

_Clarke woke up to see Lexa pointing her sword out at the air, Madi copying her movements with a stick, quick Trigedasleng words traded between them. She could catch snippets, stern training mixed with a sort of warmth._

__"Don't let them get you off guard."_ _

__"Like this?"_ _

__"Put your left foot out a bit further."_ _

__"Alright."_ _

_"'Morning, Lexa." Clarke hopped down from the rover and stepped next to Lexa. "Madi."_

__"She said you could look at my leg."_ _

_"Yeah, I should probably do that."_

__"Can I stay?"_ The question caught Clarke off-guard. _

_"Erm, yeah? Of course. We might be the last three people left on the surface. If you want to leave, that's okay, but if you don't, there's more than enough room in the rover for someone else." Madi smiled up at her, a wide, toothy grin, and the rising sun seemed just a bit brighter._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i miss lexa, still,

**Author's Note:**

> the codes-in-a-heart thing is a real concept someone really came up with in the 80s and i wish they'd implement it because under the current administration i constantly fear nuclear annihilation. also i miss lexa


End file.
